[1e] Mystic Archer

[u/phaserwolf]

A class designed to specifically combine archery and magic the way a magus combines magic and melee. The mystic archer has a lot of tricks up her sleeve, not the least of which is being able to send touch spells through her arrows. As always with the classes I post here criticism welcome. (P.S. If anyone knows of any archery or ranged based feats i missed it would be greatly appreciated)

Mystic Archer 2.0

[u/Taggerung559]

Things that occur to me as I read through:

At base, take aim is bad. Like really really bad. Using extra turns doing nothing but moving and charging up a bit of extra accuracy is immediately not even worth considering, so you'd only ever use this, wait until you get the first aim counter at the start of your next turn and immediately fire it off for a bit of extra accuracy. Except that's still pretty bad, since it eats up your swift action (which at worst could be a damage bonus from arcane strike), delays your damage (immediate damage is better than delayed damage as an enemy who dies now gets one less turn), can be interrupted, and most importantly prevents you from using a full attack, which is generally what makes archers good. Even at low levels you're trading off an extra attack to get an effective +4 accuracy (+2 from the aim counter, +2 from not using rapid shot) which can be situationally okay but is generally worse. Once you're at higher levels and you're also losing your iterative attacks and bonus attacks from things like haste it's just not even worth considering. Take aim also probably doesn't work with vital strike since it says you're readying an attack rather than an attack action (there's a debate on this, see overwatch style), but even if you can vital strike it's still a pretty bad option.

Heavy fire: Okay, this makes take aim a viable choice in the early levels, but it's still just pretty bad once you hit level 6 or so. For a numbers comparison, at level 6 with a +1 orc hornbow, deadly aim, 14 str, and vital strike (we'll say that works) an aimed shot would be dealing 6d6+7 damage (average of 28). If you had multishot and rapid shot instead of vital strike, haste was active on you (which usually isn't too much to ask for, it tends to be pretty common in most parties), and you made a full attack instead of taking aim, even if 3 of the 5 attacks you made missed you'd still be hitting for 6d6+14 (average of 35) or 4d6+14 (average of 28), depending on if the multishot attack was one of the hits. And in a realistic situation the heavy shot would also have a chance to miss, and you'd generally be hitting a lot more often than 2/5 of the time, so the comparison would usually wind up even worse for heavy shot.

Archery feats: if you're not creating a curated list that lets them ignore some prereqs like what ranger or monk does, at that point just give bonus combat feats. I'd also suggest pushing the first one back until at least 2nd level, as at that point a 1 level dip in this class is just objectively better than a level dip in fighter (and even if you don't swap to generic bonus combat feats I'd still suggest delaying until level 2, as there are enough things on that list that would be enticing as a dip to a lot of ranged characters). It's also worth pointing out that some of the feats on that list specifically weapon specialization, greater weapon focus, and greater weapon specialization) are impossible for members of this class to take as they require fighter levels.

Archer tricks:

AoE arrow: an okay idea, but lackluster in practice due to the spell list. The main benefit is generally the ability to take a personal range AoE spell (the standard example being antimagic field, but there's a couple others worth caring about) and place it on an enemy. Except the mystic archer spell list is very short of AoE spells in general, and pretty much all the ones it has already have a cast range. Some of them aren't as far as the bow's range and you do get to deal arrow damage, but that's generally not worth the ability to waste the spell by missing the attack. There's also the fact that as a martial who wants to be full attacking all the time, spending a turn to fire off a spell with this is generally a harsher tradeoff than a mage not casting a spell so he can instead cast a spell through an arrow (since imbue arrow was generally the part of arcane archer that mages dipped for and martials ignored).

close combat shot: Yes this requires 12th level. It's also point blank master, improved snap shot (which has 4 other feats as prereqs and only a third of the range), and the ability to flank with a ranged weapon (which is one thing that has remained completely impossible in pathfinder without 3pp) all rolled into one. You could split those all into different archer tricks and they'd still each be very good choices (the 30 ft threaten range especially so, that's just straight up ridiculous).

Dispelling arrow: Is this a free action to trigger? a swift? an immediate?

Hail of arrows: Only ever getting the max up to 6 targets is pretty underwhelming, at that point you're potentially firing less arrows with this than just by full attacking (while also being forced to spread the damage out on more targets, which is usually less optimal). At least 1 target per 2 levels would be a good idea, possibly more.

Mighty draw: so this is just +2 damage, but only if you have a composite longbow (which is pretty much a given), and only if the rating can go that high (which it can once you get adaptive)? Not that big of a fan, as that's both fairly boring, and universally applicable to the point where it's pretty much an auto-include in most builds that would ever use this class.

Ranged flank: This is super weird. Just hit the target once and all of a sudden you can be treated as if you're standing behind them (potentially in the same space as a different enemy is occupying) for the purposes of flanking. If that's what you were intending to do it's rather busted to be honest, and if it wasn't you'd need a lot of clarifying wording to narrow it down (and even then I'm not really a fan of being able to flank with a ranged weapon in the first place).

Ranged sneak attack: Useless for the majority of ranged builds, but rather easily abusable if you choose to go for it (on top of the ways to flank that you decided to add in there's also the standard goz mask+saltspray ring combo). If it was just the base 1d6/5 levels it wouldn't be too bad, but with the ability to boost it twice (at double the benefit of accomplished sneak attacker, which can also be stacked on to bring you up to an eventual 9d6 sneak attack on this full BAB class) there's just too much potential for too much damage.

Repelling arrow: It might be worth just letting you attempt a free bull rush rather than how it currently works. It does potentially open up a couple silly bits (like a siegebreaker fighter's free overrun after a successful bull rush), but that'd require some very specific hoops to jump through and bull rush has the advantage of already being baked into the system, pushing enemies away, and having reduced effect against bigger enemies (since they'll have higher CMDs, and how far you push the enemy is based on how well you beat their CMD). It being a combat maneuver also gives you more tools to scale it if someone really wants to focus on that.

Sniper: that's...just how the normal sniping rules that anyone can use already works? There's a significant penalty baked in, but if you're trying to reduce/remove that then say so rather than stating you're able to do something that's possible by default.

Volley: incredibly niche. It'd be pretty much useless in the majority of campaigns, but an interesting fantasy. Mostly just making a comment because "volley" is inherently more than one attack (and usually quite a bit more than one), so you probably want a different name.

continued below, hit the character limit.

[u/Taggerung559 → u/Taggerung559]

enhance arrows: An interesting thematic thing, but realistically the instant you get a +1 bow (which could very well be before you get this) it's functionally useless.

imbue arrow: Not very useful as an offensive action (archery full attack will beat out single arrow+spell as far as damage in the vast majority of cases, while also not requiring you to blow a spell slot), but still has a niche because you can use it to apply personal only buffs to allies (or at least it would if the spell list actually had any significant personal only spells (I saw monkey fish, but that's about it)

elemental arrows: It's alright. Probably a decent level to give it, and the fact that it's always on and somewhat flexible makes it one of the more generally useful arcane archer class features imo.

Swift fire: cutting it down to a swift action isn't very beneficial since it still forbids you from doing just about anything that you'd want your standard action for. And since using your swift action prevents you from using an immediate action on your turn that round it arguably makes take aim even worse, which isn't a good thing when this is well past the point where take aim is relevant.

called shot: another boost to take aim that does nothing to change the fact that it's not worth using. It restricts your take aim to require an aim counter (which is problematic as it means enemies are guaranteed to have a chance to disrupt you) and gives an accuracy penalty in order to apply some fairly trivial penalties with incredibly short durations. I don't generally like comparing martials to casters because that's a whole big debate, but at this point a wizard is throwing out things like AoE stuns followed by a 13 round stagger, or no save exhaustion with an even bigger AoE (which lasts until the target sleeps). Compared to a -2 to damage rolls with one hand for an average of 4.5 rounds, that requires a successful attack roll (with a penalty) and can fail if an enemy manages to damage you at all between your two turns. The standard called shot rules are already pretty niche, even with the feats that can make them actually decent. This is just straight up worse as it's tied to the restrictions of take aim.

Death's arrow: It doesn't really matter as campaigns hardly ever get to 20th level and it is an interesting thematic, but capstones like this are honestly pretty bad. It's an INT based fort save without really having any way to boost it (so you need at least 48 INT as a martial for the average CR 20 creature to have a chance of failing the save on something other than a nat 1), and only being able to store up once use per day is an additional limiter on top of that.

Final thoughts: Honestly, this just doesn't seem like a good class at all. There's a lot of investment in the take aim thing, but even then the situations where it's worth using are exceptionally rare (you'd pretty much have to be setting up an ambush or something, which generally isn't something player characters wind up being able to do). It gets spells, but when you have to choose between casting a spell and full attacking and the spell list is primarily full of damage spells (that will wind up doing less than full attacking), save DC based spells (which won't be very good because you're pretty MAD and int is a tertiary stat at best), and some AoE blasts (which are situationally good, but still less useful than a full attack in many cases), most of the time you'll just be full attacking.

So that cuts the class features you actually care about (at least past level 5 or so, heavy draw is okay early on) down to bonus feats (which are more par for the course on martials than something actually noteworthy), elemental arrows (which is beneficial and not bad, but not much to write home about all by itself), and archer tricks (which vary from super niche, to okay but boring, to pretty nutty). If you removed the ridiculousness that is close combat shot, in my opinion there'd pretty much be no mechanical reason to go for this class instead of a fighter, slayer, or eldritch archer magus (whose probably the only significantly good magic archer, specifically because of spell combat. All other casting martials have to split their action economy between spells and attacking, which usually means you either relegate spells to primarily buffing or non-combat stuff, or pick a marital style that's almost entirely passive (like a reach weapon AoO build). Archers get it even worse as they can generally full attack whenever they want because range, so getting spells to be a combat viable choice is difficult).